Tru-Cape, South Africa's largest marketer of topfruit, has come to the end of its apple and pear picking season, with the company describing it as a 'busy and succesful harvest'.
The company is happy with the way the year is panning out, it said in a statement, despite a number of challenges in terms of fruit size and quality.
“Sales into the UK started slower this year as a result of UK supermarkets’ Buy British campaigns but, hopefully, we will be able to continue later than normal, which should even it out,' explained Roeld Pienaar, Tru-Cape's fruit marketing managing director. 'The smaller fruit, primarily as a result of high summer temperatures, has found a home and satisfying values despite concerns that it wouldn’t.”
According to Pienaar, now that the oil price has broken the US$50 mark per barrel, exports into Africa, especially Nigeria, are starting to recover.
'Golden Delicious remains the top selling apple variety in West Africa and it is more apparent than ever that we should have ample volumes in the market before the start of the Ramadan period,” he noted.
Although there are no immediate alarm bells with regard to Britain leaving the European Union, it has impacted the foreign exchange rate, with the rand strengthening against the pound.
“Any gains as a result of a weaker rand in the first part of the season are short term as our input costs are in dollars,' Pienaar outlined. 'We don’t have a view about where the rand should be pegged but do need currency stability, whatever the level, although with local government elections on the horizon in August this year, it is unlikely the currency will stabilise much and we can all expect some volatility.
'We also know from previous years that there are often factional flareups and protest action in the run up to an election,' he added. 'We hope that short-term political point scoring won’t impact the Western Cape agricultural industry which contributes more than R6bn to the economy each year.
'We take our job of selling our fruit very seriously and know that over 15,200 people and their families rely on our ability to secure the best prices for South African apples and pears for their livelihoods.”
